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Monday, February 06, 2012

GOP Insiders Are Getting Ready For Obama's Re-Election

Showing even more the sad state of the Republican Party (Fiscal Times).

Indeed, Obama’s chances for re-election are starting to look so good that Republican insiders are already considering what it will mean for 2016. One commonly-heard scenario is that the party’s right wing will blame the party establishment for forcing Romney upon them, a moderate Democrat-in-disguise who so dispirited Republican activists that they just stayed home on Election Day, handing Obama an easy victory. The activists will resolve to work even harder to nominate a “real conservative” in 2016.

Alternatively, what’s left of the establishment may conclude that it erred by not uniting behind a candidate more in sync with the party’s conservatives, but with none of Romney’s baggage left over from a political career in the nation’s most liberal state, Massachusetts. Many activists already claim that Romney’s nomination would rob the GOP of its single best issue, opposition to Obama’s health reform, because it is virtually a carbon copy of the health plan Romney approved in Massachusetts when he was governor.

The establishment may try harder to cultivate a winner for 2016 from among the crop of Republicans that flirted with running this time but chose not to run for one reason or another. These include New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Also, by 2016, some of the party’s rising stars such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal may be ready for prime time.

...Republicans like David Frum who have been worried about the drift of the party into such a hard core right wing position that it cannot win a presidential election appear somewhat torn as to what the best electoral result is from their point of view. On the one hand, they are all behind Romney, hoping that if he wins he will govern as the center-right leader he was in Massachusetts. But they are fearful that if Romney wins the nomination and loses the general election it could cause the party’s conservative base to redouble its efforts to nominate a “true conservative” in 2016 who would lose even more badly.

...At this point, it is all just speculation. But clearly, no Republican, except maybe the supporters of long-shot Ron Paul, is really happy with the way the nominating process has gone this year. Even the most enthusiastic, anti-Obama Republican has to admit that his party’s prospects for victory have diminished somewhat over the last several months. If the Republicans lose this fall, there will be recriminations and consequences.

Notice in the list above for 2016 the names DeMint or Palin are missing? This is the crux of the GOP problem.

Let me give you the poster child with what's wrong in the GOP...

I don't think there's many of us who aren't deluded about Newt Gingrich. We know his baggage, but he is almost the only one out there offering ideas to the problems this nation faces. Big government Republicans like Coulter who masquerade as conservatives delude themselves into believing Romney is a conservative, twisting themselves like a pretzel to make their rationalizations.

No one is buying the lies of Coulter and the GOP establishment about Romney's "conservatism" and "electability." Explain to me why Romney's wins have been with a smaller margin than in 2008; while Gingrich (in South Carolina and the Florida counties he won) and his candidacy excited people to turn out.